Samuel Jackson: Ideal Villain To The Best of Spies In “KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE”

Every great
action hero needs an ideal villain to make the good vs. evil dynamics work
well. In the upcoming highly stylized
non-stop action film “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” Samuel Jackson plays the
villain role to the hilt as Richmond Valentine, a tech billionaire and
disillusioned eco-campaigner whose desire to save the earth at any cost has led
him to devise a scheme that will have devastating consequences for everyone.

After
Valentine is the Kingsman – an elite group of operatives working outside of the
government. Martial in style, they are an altruistic unit that gets things
done. “They’re the good guys,” says
Colin Firth, who plays Harry, whose Kingsman name is Galahad, named after the
Arthurian legend. “We’re living in an age in which we’re very suspicious of our
institutions and our governments. Whatever trust we’ve once had has been
undermined, so I think it’s interesting to explore the idea that there is an
organization with pure motives. One not compromised by the politics and
bureaucracy of these institutions. The Kingsmen are the modern-day Knights of
the Round Table.” With Harry is
newly-recruited spy Eggsy, played by newcomer Taron Egerton. Harry feels responsible for the death of
Eggsy’s father, and that he owes the man a debt. When a Kingsman agent is
killed, the organization looks for a new recruit. Explains Firth: “When Harry
sees that his fallen comrade’s son, Eggsy, is on a fast track to disaster in
the way he’s growing up, Harry rises to the challenge of seeing if he can save
the boy. That’s partly guilt, but he wants to see if he can mold Eggsy into
Kingsman material. He says quite explicitly that being a gentleman has nothing
to do with accents or upbringing; it’s something one learns and proves in one’s
behavior.”

A voracious comic-book fan,
Samuel L. Jackson had already read the books by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons
where the film was based when he heard Vaughn was interested in him for the
part of Valentine. “The Kingsmen were different kinds of gentleman spies,” he
reflects. “I thought the concept was great and I always thought it would make a
wonderful film.”

Jackson loved Vaughn and
Goldman’s script, and says he immediately understood Valentine’s motivations.
“The really crazy thing was that it totally made sense,” he laughs. “The film
is full of great visual images, and I felt a thrill taking the ride.”

Valentine’s logic posits that
the global population has swelled to uncontrollable levels, so it requires
culling. His deadly plan is to produce SIM cards that he will distribute freely
around the world, and which will both stimulate aggression and reduce
inhibition. They’ll literally cause people to tear each other apart, save for a
select few chosen for their intelligence, power and beauty. With protective
chips implanted into the heads of these elite, Valentine has rounded them up
and transported them to his secret base.

Jackson describes Valentine as a
moral, pragmatic man. “He understands that you have to make certain choices in
order for things to work, and in order for the world to succeed, sacrifices
must be made, and somebody has to be willing to make them.”

Argues Firth: “Valentine is
genocidal! He’s a mass murderer and a psychopath. He may have the greater good in his mind but
if that involves the death of millions of people, that ideology is unlikely to
be shared by the rest of humanity.” Still,
he understands why Jackson found a reason for Valentine’s actions. “I think
it’s perfectly appropriate that Sam doesn’t see his character as a
villain. As actors our job is to inhabit
our characters, and you have to see them the way they see themselves – but with
my own character’s subjectivity, Valentine is a villain in the classic Bond
tradition.”

Agrees Jackson: “We’re playing
this cat-and-mouse game, where Harry pretends not to know who Valentine is and
Valentine pretends not to know who Harry is, until they actually sit down and
say it. Game on; let’s see who comes out victorious.”

“Kingsman: The Secret Service”
opens February 18 in theatres nationwide from 20th Century Fox to be
distributed by Warner Bros.